Thousands wait for affordable housing

High costs cut numbers of new city-funded projects

Are taxpayer-subsidized housing programs doing enough good in San Diego?

They have certainly helped Celeste Vinzant, a disabled veteran who recently moved to a new subsidized complex in upscale Fairbanks Ranch.

“I was homeless; I was living in my car. I was living at the park in Mission Bay, showering in cold water,” she said this month.

Over the course of eight years receiving housing assistance, Vinzant has used the resulting stability to earn a master’s degree in counseling psychology. Now she’s working through 3,000 pre-licensure hours of service and looking forward to full-time employment.

But tens of thousands of other San Diegans aren’t getting a chance to build similar success stories.

Programs serving the poorest are overwhelmed, with 45,000 applications on file for a chance at 15,000 fully subscribed rent vouchers. For perspective, that waiting list is triple the 14,723 subsidized apartments built in San Diego over the last 33 years.

And that’s just the tip of a big policy challenge. One study concludes the city needs nearly 64,000 more low-cost apartments immediately for those in dire need.

By any measure, the city government’s efforts to help low-income families are far behind the demand for subsidies, and losing ground.

High cost has been a major factor. In recent years the public has paid luxury price tags for a handful of subsidized construction projects, draining money to build more apartments.

“They are building Cadillacs,” said Alan Nevin, director of economic and market research at Xpera Group, a building-industry consulting group.

Water conservation
48% (783)

Job growth
31% (508)

Affordable housing
21% (336)

This outcome flows from a system that evolved over years to build projects whenever public money pops up, and isn’t necessarily focused on reducing costs or producing the maximum number of apartments.

“We’re very good at the problem statement, and we tend to be very good at the tactical level, like getting funding,” said Bruce Resnik, executive director of the San Diego Housing Federation, which represents developers and subsidized housing advocates. “But we tend to be less good at what the overall vision should be.”

The most extreme example of high-end cost is found in Barrio Logan, according to figures provided by the San Diego Housing Commission.

Operating under a city contract, developers spent $46.2 million from federal, state and local sources to build 92 apartments at the Estrella del Mercado on National Avenue, which was completed in 2012.

That works out to $502,000 per apartment. At this cost, a private-sector developer probably wouldn’t proceed with the project unless it was confident renters would pay $5,500 a month or more, using an industry rule of thumb outlined by Nevin.

Instead, rents range from $432 to $1,109 each month at the complex, according to a 2012 city news release.

Setting aside the Mercado project, price tags of $400,000 per subsidized unit in new complexes are the rule lately, particularly downtown. This places public housing in the same league as luxury apartments downtown, and 35 percent higher than midrange private projects in other urban neighborhoods.